CHMate+ vs MapleRead CE
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
CHMate+
This app provides a robust reading experience for EPUB and CHM eBooks. Organize your library, add bookmarks and notes, and easily search for text. Customize your reading with adjustable fonts and brightness, and share passages with friends.
- Organize files into personal collections
- Add bookmarks and notes
- Customizable fonts and line height
- Built-in search feature
- Share quotes with friends
- Adjustable screen brightness
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Default ebook formatting does not always suit the way you read. CHMate+ turns your personal files into a calm, comfortable reading corner. A customizable wooden bookshelf with an ambient lamp and personal decor. Pay once up front. Read without subscriptions or in-app purchases. A BOOKSHELF OF YOUR OWN • Wooden shelves and ambient lamp: Display your personal collection with warm bookshelf lighting. • Shelf decor: Arrange animated ornaments, plants, paintings, and shelf-edge figures. • Personal memories: Decorate with photos, Live Photos, or silent looping videos (MP4/MOV). • Custom layout: Freely move, resize, and favorite your decor items. TAILORED TYPOGRAPHY • Page colors: Choose from six page colors independently of your typography theme, with light, dark, or automatic appearance. • Precise reading controls: Adjust font size, line height, page margins, and fonts for body, headings, and code. • Custom font import: Read with built-in fonts or import your own font files. • Horizontal and vertical reading: Switch text orientation where supported for Chinese and Japanese text. • iCloud theme sync: Save your custom typography themes and sync them across your devices. TOOLS & LOCAL IMPORT • Supported formats: Read your own EPUB and CHM files with structured table of contents navigation. • Local Wi-Fi transfer: Send files directly from your computer browser over your local network. • Reading tools: Search full text across chapters, add highlights, and review notes in one place. UPFRONT PURCHASE • Full access with multiple books included from day one. • Single upfront purchase with no in-app purchases. • No subscriptions and no ads.
MapleRead CE
This app offers an immersive EPUB reading experience with customizable audio-visual features. It allows users to personalize book styles, generate audiobooks, and sync progress across devices. It also functions as a powerful library management tool for organizing and accessing your book collection.
- Customizable EPUB reader
- Pseudo audiobook generation
- Immersion reading (sync audio/text)
- Library management and organization
- Cross-device sync
- User-defined customization options
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MapleRead is dedicated to enable unique audio-visual reading experience for everyone. ------------ Our MapleRead app family has 3 members, namely SE, CE and CX. - SE is our flagship product with all features. - CE is SE without PDF reader and built-in Library Server. - CX is CE with some limitation. Free to try. - No recurring subscription fees. No ads. Just buy it once. Gratuity optional. - Moreover, SE and CE can be run side-by-side via split-view multitasking. - Recommend SE for use on multiple devices with easy and fast book sharing via Library Server. - Recommend the SE-CE bundle for the best value. ------------ MapleRead includes a superb audio-visual EPUB e-book reader. - It lets you easily modify publisher's original book style to better suit your aesthetic taste. - It lets you instantly generate pseudo audiobooks with a choice of narrator voices over 40 languages. - It enables immersion reading so that you may read and listen to the same book in sync. - Background listening works well too. Compatible with Lock Screen Music Player and CarPlay. MapleRead UI is friendly to users of all ages. - Books can be read in regular and large print. - A choice of UI text sizes makes reading in non-book views much more comfortable. MapleRead is a great learning tool. - It lets you look up words, translate sentences, search text, highlight text and write notes. - It helps you collect vocabulary and organize notes with various priorities. - It provides hooks to user-defined dictionaries, translators, and other tools. - Immersion reading improves your comprehension, especially of foreign-language books. MapleRead is an effective and fast library management tool. - It is designed for you, a book lover, who may own a huge and/or growing book collection. - It lets you keep all your books in one place and well-organized automatically. - It lets you display your books elegantly in style. - It lets you easily repair individual book metadata. - If supports multiple book sets and multiple tags. - It offers multiple ways to import and export books, and works well with Calibre. MapleRead supports secure sync across devices via MapleRead Cloud and iCloud. - It syncs reading positions, notes, vocab, bookmarks, and book set membership (but not the books). - It syncs reading positions additionally via iCloud for even better user experience. - It enables web access to synced data via web browsers from desktop and mobile devices. MapleRead offers unprecedented user-defined customization options. - They include unlimited user-defined fonts, book themes, cover images and library scenes. - Each book theme includes various types of user-defined highlight colors. - Each book can have its own theme, and each EPUB book can have its own style. [For more technical details, screenshots, FAQ and reviews, please visit our website.]
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: MapleRead CE at 4.5 against CHMate+'s 3.8. MapleRead CE also leads on review sentiment (79% vs 61%) and price ($6.99 vs $9.99). CHMate+'s advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 3) and update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 6 weeks). On ratings volume, ads, chart position and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
CHMate+ costs $9.99 and MapleRead CE $6.99 up front. MapleRead CE sells 3 one-off in-app purchases. CHMate+ asks for nothing beyond the download.
MapleRead CE holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 3.8. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 8 and 13 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 61% of CHMate+'s written reviews are positive against 79% of MapleRead CE's.
CHMate+ ships an update every 2 weeks, MapleRead CE every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and November 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | CHMate+ | MapleRead CE |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $9.99 | $6.99 — better |
| Rating | 3.8 (8 ratings) | 4.5 (13 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 60.9% of reviews | 78.6% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 8 | 13 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks — better | Every 6 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Best chart rank | #149 | #106 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 51 MB | 26 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | 贤安 陈 | Maplepop LLC |
Customer experience
CHMate+
MapleRead CE
Bugs and requests
CHMate+
Reported bugs
4 issues- Crashes when searching within documents
- Table of contents not syncing with current position
- Highlighting and annotations not working reliably
- Issues with opening and loading certain CHM files
Requested features
5 requests- Full-text search across documents
- Folder organization for files
- Improved image handling and zooming
- Sync with cloud storage services
- Ability to rename files
MapleRead CE
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
CHMate+
No in-app purchases
MapleRead CE
- Small Gratuity$0.99
- Gratuity Level 2$1.99
- Gratuity Level 5$4.99









